we need to deal with our runaway government spending. the government is spending too much money. tax increases are not part of cutting the budget. tax increases are what politicians do instead of reform the government. as long as tax increases are on the table, the politicians never even think about reforming government. >> and i understand. you have been on this fight for a long time and you've been devoted to the whole idea of not seeing taxes increase anywhere. but what we're down to right now is largely a political battle over the increase in marginal tax rates based on what you earn. i understand there's a lot more to this puzzle, but on that front, because that's the one that gets most of the ink around here, whether people who earn more than $250,000 or $400,000 or $1 million should may-pay more tax. the point is that's not going to hurt the economy. that's all we're talking about. paying 4.6%, 8 points higher on your income over $250,000, empirically the evidence isn't there that that's going to hurt the any economy. >> well, it's going to take taxes from 35% up to 43.6%